Venetian silver rimonim

The rimonim ('pomegranates') are a pair of ornaments crowning the two staves of the Torah scroll when it is dressed, in allusion to the pomegranate fruit and to the bells on the high priest's vestment. Fitted with small bells that tinkle when the scroll is carried, they represent the most refined synagogue silversmithing. The Venetian, and more broadly Italian, tradition favors a tiered tower or campanile architecture, with several superimposed openwork registers, in repoussé, chased, and sometimes gilded silver. These pieces testify to the role of silversmiths in the Italian ghettos in the production of cultic objects in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.